As voter suppression laws spread across the country, voting rights advocates can take heart: the biggest state in the nation is on the cusp of passing a major voter protection initiative.

Election Day Registration (EDR), which allows citizens to register up to and on Election Day, passed the California State Senate today by a party-line vote of 23-13. AB 1436 had passed the State Assembly in May 47-26.

Under current law, Californians cannot register to vote in the final two weeks before an election, just as many Americans are beginning to tune in. EDR will eliminate that deadline, ensuring that no citizen is disenfranchised because he or she wasn’t registered beforehand.

This won’t just benefit slackers. Historically-disenfranchised citizens like minorities and poorer Americans, will particularly benefit from EDR. On average, studies have found that EDR boosts voter turnout by seven percentage points. Common Cause’s Phillip Ung told ThinkProgress he “expects voter turnout to increase by the hundreds of thousands” solely as a result of EDR.

Eight states currently allow their citizens to register on Election Day: Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. California is poised to become the latest, and by far the largest, state to enact EDR.

California’s version of EDR differs slightly from the way it’s employed elsewhere. Rather than allowing citizens to register at regular polling stations, as they do in Maine, for instance, California will have Election Day registration at a county registrar’s office, where citizens will be able to vote as well.

The bill now returns to the Assembly for a concurrence vote — which is all but assured of passage — due to a small change in the Senate version before reaching Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) desk. Brown has not commented publicly on the bill, but has been very supportive of election reform efforts in the past and advocates expect he will sign the legislation.

AB 1436 also increases the fine for voter fraud to $50,000, one of the highest penalties in the country.

Assuming Brown signs the bill, it will not take effect until the next presidential election in 2016.

California News

As large swathes of the western United States continue to wither under the effects of record-breaking drought, longstanding local concerns over water use are becoming increasingly contentious, adding to the national debate over corporate right and common good.
In recent weeks, a desert area of Southern California has seen focus suddenly turn toward a water-bottling plant owned by Nestle Waters North America, which has continued its operations despite the worsening water crisis. In an outraged action request in mid-August, the League of Conservation Voters, a prominent national lobby group, urged 50,000...

(Reuters) - The California State Senate passed legislation on Tuesday imposing strict regulations on how law enforcement and other government agencies can use drones, a move supporters said will protect privacy and prevent warrantless surveillance.
The bill attracted bipartisan support in the Senate, passing 25-8 during the evening vote in Sacramento.
The legislation would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before using an unmanned aircraft, or drone, except in emergencies such as a fire or a hostage-taking.
Other public agencies would be able to use drones, or contract for their use,...

Alarmed that fewer than one-fourth of voters are showing up for municipal elections, the Los Angeles Ethics Commission voted Thursday to recommend that the City Council look at using cash prizes to lure a greater number of people to the polls.
On a 3-0 vote, the panel said it wanted City Council President Herb Wesson's Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee to seriously consider the use of financial incentives and a random drawing during its elections, possibly as soon as next year.
Depending on the source of city funds, the idea could...

As residents of California are urged to conserve water and the state considers placing a mandatory restriction on outdoor water usage, Nestlé is trucking away undisclosed amounts of the precious resource in the form of bottled water.
The Desert Sun has an in-depth report of controversy brewing around the company’s bottling plant, which draws water from a drought-stricken area for its Arrowhead and Pure Life brand water. Because the plant is located on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians’ reservation, it’s exempt from oversight by local water agencies and is able to keep...

Jacque DelRio interviews Chris Silva (brother of David Silva) and the family attorney David Khon on PDA Radio on Saturday 6/21 at 3pm EST.
One year after the death of David Sal Silva, who was beaten by police outside a Bakersfield hospital, family, friends, and supporters gathered near Kern County Superior Court to commemorate his life and to put a spotlight on police brutality in the community.
Protesters greeted rush hour traffic with signs demanding accountability for police misconduct and exposed the names of the officers that were involved in Silva’s death.
Last...

This is the story of my attempts to speak publicly about my friendship with Todd Ashker, a reputed “leader” of the hunger strike in California’s prisons. Since the latest hunger strike began on July 8, the California authorities have targeted Ashker for special attention, placing articles, editorials and op-eds in the California Press that paint him as some kind of neo-Nazi devil. The evidence they give for this portrayal is entirely from 1991 and before.
I know the Todd Ashker of 2013. For some years, I have corresponded with him and...

“It was like a dream. From the Rules Committee committing to end the packing of endorsement caucuses by elected officials, to our anti-fracking resolution coming out of committee stronger than when it went in and then passing on the consent calendar, to the sold-out PDA luncheon and the overwhelming win by RL Miller in the Environmental Caucus, PDA and other progressives hurried from win to win pinching ourselves to see if it was real.”
As Dorothy Reik, PDA Santa Monica Mountains Chapter Leader so aptly put above, PDA was again what...

California became the fifth and largest state this week to win federal approval for a new plan aimed at improving care for almost a half-million of the state’s most vulnerable patients.
Called Cal MediConnect, the new three-year demonstration program initially will enable the eight counties to pool funding and resources for so-called “dual-eligibles,” lower-income people who qualify both for federal Medicare and the federal-state Medi-Cal program for the poor (California’s name for Medicaid).
In announcing the program Wednesday in a teleconference from Sacramento, California Health and Human Services Secretary Diana Dooley, said...

New tactics and hands-on organizing help California Calls redraw the Golden State's political map.
Progressives who want a path to a political future where an emerging electorate is bypassing the budget battles now afflicting Congress and where decades of damage wrought by right-wingers is slowly being repaired, should look to California. There, a historic coalition of local organizers and labor unions have been remaking the landscape since 2010 by engaging “overlooked” voters.
For much of the past decade, California had terrible state budget deficits, a legislature...

For the 8th year in a row, healthcare reform activists from all over the state gathered in Sacramento and Los Angeles to support the annual CaHPSA Lobby Day March and Rally. Health professional students from college campuses all over California come to Sacramento every winter to lobby their legislative representatives for a single payer healthcare system.
Nurses, doctors, and activists started the day by marching into the California Association of Health Plans, and serving them with an Eviction Notice, demanding they remove themselves from...

From 2008 to 2011, metals stolen for resale to recyclers rose 81 percent nationwide.
The thieves strike in the middle of the night and work fast, in pairs or teams. They can make an entire neighborhood go dark in minutes. They screw open the street light maintenance boxes, find the copper wires and cut. Zip, zip.
While police nab copper thieves in the act, they can’t be everywhere. Come nighttime, some streets are as black as caves. Even if thieves stopped today, utility crews would need up...

As a lawsuit was filed to stop unregulated fracking in California, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and former Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast, claimed that fracking causes no environmental harm in the state.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a rapidly spreading, environmentally destructive new method of oil and gas extraction that is drawing growing opposition throughout the state by environmentalists, fishermen, tribal members, family farmers and...

Henry Vandermeir, who cashed in a successful career writing computer books so he could spend much of the past 15 years as a political activist, was elected chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County on Monday night by the county party’s governing Central Committee.
Vandermeir, who bested gay activist Jeff LeTourneau in a 36-21 vote, replaces Santa Ana attorney Frank Barbaro, who stepped down after leading the county party for the past 12 years.
“I am going to have fun beating Republicans,” Vandermeir told Central Committee members.
At...

Dr Ami Bera, a Los Angeles-born physician son of Indian immigrants, has increased his lead in the race for California's 7th Congressional district bringing him a step closer to making history.
If he wins, Bera will only be the third Indian-American elected to the US House of Representatives after Dalip Singh Saund in 1952 and current Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal in 2004.
Running for the second time the seat around Sacramento, Bera was ahead by a razor-thin 184 votes against Republican incumbent Dan Lungren, with 88,406...

The shameless spectacle of billionaires drowning the airwaves should not numb us to the consequences of what is at stake if the super rich succeed in buying our elections.
While most of the national focus is on the Presidential race and some high profile Senate elections, the less profiled California ballot measures provide a disturbing portrait of what of a clearly broken system.
California Propositions 32 and 33 in particular and the onslaught of secretive political action committees that hide the names of their rich sponsors, are just...